Ground Covers Are to Gardening What Tiling Is to Housing
Imagine your newly built house, spacious and grand, except they didn’t finish the floors. There are no carpets and no tiles, and as you wander throughout your new mansion, bare and rough concrete floors greet you in every room. That would be a complete affront to our sensibilities, and while one can mulch or otherwise cover the soil in a landscaped garden, without ground covers, you’d get pretty much the same unfinished feeling. More than that, whereas unfinished floors might take a few centuries to decay and disintegrate, the potential for erosion and attrition in a garden setting that lacks ground covers, is alarming.
Even more than those considerations, ground covers give such a sense of completeness, or an array of colours, or both, their absence in the landscape is simply a loss all-round. The reason why ground covers are such a staple of the green industry is that they “bind” a landscape together, completing the picture, and providing huge aesthetic value in terms of textures, colours, and movement. Moreover, while garden walls might stem serious erosion, localised erosion is commonplace in a garden without ground covers. Rather than compete with trees and shrubs for nutrients and moisture, they bind the soil that anchors the giants and encourage the establishment of a natural cycle of decay and nutrition so essential to holistically healthy gardens.
Here’s Your Canvas of Many Colours
Beyond the scientifically slanted legitimacy ground covers enjoy, it’s true (and far easier) to simply say that the range of options available to gardeners in the more commonly grown ground cover varieties is large. There are dazzling spring colours, subtle autumn shades, and even plants with foliage that goes bright red in winter! There are bright and floriferous ground covers for sunny expanses, and handsome green lilies with beautiful flower umbels for the shade beneath trees.
There are succulent ground covers, tropical ground covers, tall species and short species, grass species and mossy species, exotic species and indigenous species, evergreen ones and deciduous ones – the list is a long and varied one.
Ground cover plants can be bought in “plug” trays (plastic or foam trays with many cavities that contain young plants) or in bags, but whichever you choose, make sure you buy from a grower like Windy Willows. Most people outside the industry don’t realise this but ground covers add up in terms of cost, as you’ll need a fair number to correctly space out and cover any given area. The last thing you want is subsequent gaps appearing or, even worse, to waste your time planting up a section of your garden with a completely unsuitable ground cover species.
For both reasons, it’s a great plan to buy vigorous plants from the source – the nursery that propagated them, nurtured them, and can vouch for their vigour and performance.
Come to Windy Willows for the Real Deal
At Windy Willows Nursery, we’ve been growing plants for the landscaping trade for decades. We have a huge variety, and we can tell you everything you need to know about any given species, giving you the inside information that will provide just the right kind of intel you need to make your gardening a success.
If it is ground covers you want, ground covers we have! Call us, mail us, but get to us for the best ground cover shopping experience of your green life!
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